Ubo NAS: Pi 5 and Raxda HAT with aluminum enclosure & GUI (Update 1)
- Mehrdad Majzoobi
- 14 minutes ago
- 3 min read
Story
There is a growing popularity in DIY NAS builds for self-hosting files and photos with OpenMediaVault and Immch.
I was inspired by Jeff Geerling NAS build that uses Pi 5 and Raxda Penta SSD HAT and wanted to explore building an aluminum enclosure with GUI for this system.
Micheal Klement has also designed several popular enclosures for this setup.
I am documenting my design journey and sharing with the DIY community to get their feedback and ideas to build a better system.
Disclaimer
This is a purely exploratory project at this point. If there’s strong interest, I will consider making a small batch of the aluminum enclosures and power adapter boards for sale in my Tindie shop. I am offering some of the base covers and top HATs with heavy discounts on my Shopify that you can use in your DIY build.
How is this any different?
Okay, you may ask how this is different from other NAS devices and even Michael’s enclosure.
Basically there are three things that sets this apart from existing DIY designs
Aluminum enclosure
GUI and software side
USB-PD power adapter board (under development)
Future support for internal UPS (uninterruptible power supply)
Implementation
The aluminum enclosure will follow the same profile as the Ubo pod. The only difference is how the ports are arranged being the enclosure as well as fan and other features that need to be CNC’d on the profile. Initial prototypes will be 3D printed.
The USB-PD power adapter board main function is to power Radxa with USB-PD (12V) instead of using a barrel jack. The board will probably have other features, possibly support for uninterruptible power management for DIY internal battery pack.
The GUI would allow users to check system resources such as CPU, Memory, Disk, Network usage to even open files to see images or video on the tiny embedded display. It would also allow users to plug-in a USB drive and copy files over without the need to use a monitor/keyboard.
The GUI and software side is quite mature as it is based on Ubo-app foundation even though currently certain features (such as displaying disk and network usage) are not present, they can be easily and quickly added (this is open hardware and software).
Parts
Raspberry Pi 5, 4GB RAM min
Raxda Penta HAT
Button cover (STL) - or buy on shop
3D printed STL - maybe later aluminum enclosure
Stand-offs
28mm x 4 (M2.5 Hex)
19mm x 5 (M2.5 Hex)
17mm x 4 (M2.5 Hex)
Connector Sideboard - buy on shop
USB-PB Sideboard (under development)
The images below showcase the first prototype of this system:
Please note that this is still a work in progress. If you want to do a DIY build, please open an issue on GitHub repo with #MyFirstBuild title and specify any requirement that may not be met by this design.
3D files
The base try and the enclosure files can be accessed below to 3D printing:
KiCAD files
Electrical design files will be added to the following repo soon (side board design is already here):
Shop
I have the side connector PCB and the base chassis available for sale in my shop. You can 3D print the base but building the side PCB can be challenging:
Base Chassis: https://shop.getubo.com/products/base-chassis-standard
Side PCB: https://shop.getubo.com/products/connector-board-for-raspberry-pi-4-and-5-radxa-x4-radxa-rock-4c
I am recording a series of videos for this build. You can check out the first part of the video that I published on my Youtube channel:
If this is something you are interested in and want to use, please let me know in the video comments section or here.
Your feedback is greatly appreciated and helps me better focus the design on what people want.
This is an extension of its sister open source product I am planning to launch on Kickstarter soon. I would really appreciate it if you can check it and support it when the campaign goes live: